The Remembrall's Secret
by Zenitram Nahtan
Summary: Neville is called back into action by The Order of the Phoenix after receiving a mysterious letter
1. The Dark Night

*I did not create these characters; I have only made them older.  
  
*This story takes place about ten years after Harry and his friends have graduated from Hogwarts.  
  
Chapter 1: The Dark Night  
  
Rain poured down the windows as Neville sat with his parents. It had been nearly five years since he had seen them last, and he regretted ever forgetting them in such a way. Life had changed so dramatically for him that he rarely had a moment to himself, much less a moment to make a visit to the hospital to see them. Every drop of rain seemed to startle the young man, even though he had mostly outgrown his childhood fear of water, especially the kind that came from clouds. Neville was sure that he would be able to spend more time with his parents now that he had taken over as manager at Gringott's Bank. The new position ensured that he could dictate his own schedule, instead of doing what others asked of him as he had done for the larger portion of his life.  
Seeing that there was no more reason to be at the hospital as his parents were sleeping, Neville made his way out into the world. He was always afraid to leave the hospital, fearing that next time he would be entering only to find his parents had finally died. Oh, how he wished they would someday return to normal, although he knew that would never happen. He could thank Peter Pettigrew for that.  
"Good night, Mr. Longbottom," the nurse on duty said as he exited.  
Drops of rain started to freeze his skin as soon as he left the building, and he only wished that he were at home with Parvati. Soon enough, he thought, as he apparated to a location outside of his home. As he started to walk towards his front door and into the comfort of his home, his wife, and his daughter, Neville caught sight of an owl that would always remain familiar to him; Hedwig. The great bird swooped down from the sky and landed on his outstretched arm, handing him a small piece of parchment. As Neville unraveled the tiny sheet, he gasped. Looking at the paper, he only saw seven words, "The Order of The Phoenix needs you." The most surprising thing of all about the letter was the handwriting. Usually whenever the Order was calling on him, the letter was in Harry's handwriting since he had taken charge of the organization. Neville knew something was terribly wrong because this handwriting was none other than his own. 


	2. United at The Order

*The characters within are not my own creation.  
  
Chapter 2: United at The Order  
  
The old house was just as ominous as it had always been, despite it being home to the largest association of good wizards in the world. Neville hurried through the halls, careful not to disturb the painting of Sirius' mother. As he entered the kitchen, Neville was yet again surprised at what he saw. Everything was absolutely normal; Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Seamus were just about to sit down to eat dinner. It was as if there was no reason for Neville to be there at all. This caused him to be slightly disappointed because it had been a very long time since he had been needed by someone other than his wife and child. He had been buried in paperwork at Gringott's ever since the last time he was called into duty for The Order, and he had hoped that this would be another chance to escape the monotony of life. Every wizard's life had become routine in the past five years' ever since The Order celebrated its greatest victory of defeating the Dark Lord Voldemort. But now that he glanced around the place, Neville sensed no urgency, no real need for him to have been called into duty.  
"Hey, Neville. What are you doing here so late at night?" Hermione asked.  
"I just received a letter from Hedwig saying that The Order needed me. It seemed pretty urgent, so I came over here as soon as I could," Neville explained to them all. As he said this, he noticed that his four friends just looked at him, dumbfounded.  
"Neville, I haven't sent you anything tonight, and Hedwig has been in the house the whole night," Harry said. "Did anyone else send Neville the letter?"  
They all said no. Neville wondered if he should mention the fact that the letter was written in his own handwriting and not that of one of the other senior members of The Order who usually wrote the messages. As if he were reading Neville's mind, Harry asked if he could see the letter that Neville had received. Neville handed the paper to Harry and watched his eyes as they scanned it. After reviewing it for about a minute, Harry slowly looked up at Neville. Harry started to pass the paper around the little group so the others could see. His expression told Neville that this was probably more serious than they had thought.  
"Neville, how did you say you got this?" asked Seamus after reading what was clearly Neville's handwriting.  
"Hedwig brought it to me when I was about to enter my house. I had been with my parents, but they were sleeping so I decided to go home."  
"You realize this is Neville's handwriting, right Harry?" Ron questioned.  
"Of course he knows its Neville's handwriting. We went to school with him for seven years, and have had to read his handwriting for another ten after that!" Hermione exclaimed. It seemed that she was a little on edge that evening, but that was to be expected since her first child was almost a month overdue.  
"Let's try and relax, honey. I just wanted to point it out since no one else had," Ron retorted calmly, knowing that Hermione was already stressed enough without him arguing with her.  
"We better look into this, guys," Harry stated. "It may seem that Neville could've written this just so he could come out here and see us –"  
"Hey!"  
"—but I think that something serious is behind this. How else do you explain Hedwig being involved?"  
"Well what can we do about it? Right now all we know is that I got a curious letter, supposedly from myself, and that's it!"  
"We could scan your brain to see if you went insane, stole Harry's owl, wrote yourself a letter, then sent it to yourself," Seamus suggested. "Wait, how would he have stolen Hedwig without us hearing, though?"  
"See this is serious, Seamus. We aren't dealing with Neville going crazy."  
Neville moved to sit down at the large table with the rest of the gang. As he did, a tea cup floated down from the shelf and instantly filled itself with steaming ginseng tea, Neville's favorite. They all sat in silence for about half an hour, all pondering what they should do about the whole situation. A few ideas were thrown out half-heartedly as the speaker realized the idea was terribly flawed. Neville was about to open his mouth to say something when the screaming voice of Sirius' mother echoed throughout every part of the house. All of them shot up from the table and ran out into the corridor, only to smack right into a rain soaked Professor McGonagall. Before she could even speak, screaming of another kind could be heard from upstairs and Harry rushed up as quickly as he could. When he came back down, he was holding a girl of about five and a half years old.  
"You woke up Priscilla, Professor, when you startled Sirius' mother," Harry said as he comforted his daughter.  
"So sorry. I came as soon as I could," she gasped, apparently out of breath. "Wasn't safe for me to send an owl...could've been intercepted...don't want world to know...not yet," McGonagall continued on between huge breaths.  
"What're you talking about, Professor?" Hermione asked.  
"I have a feeling this might be connected to my letter," Neville stated with apprehension.  
"Harry, Professor Dumbledore's been found dead in his office! It appears he was murdered!" was all McGonagall could get out before she fainted on the ground from exhaustion. 


	3. Deceived By a Friend

*I did not create these characters  
  
Chapter 3: Deceived By a Friend  
  
"Are you okay?" Neville asked McGonagall as he handed her a glass of water. She had been passed out for about an hour when she finally came to, leaving a lot of time for Neville and the others to consider what she had said. Could Dumbledore really be dead? It had been rumored that only a wizard as powerful as Voldemort could commit such an act since Dumbledore himself was supposedly the greatest wizard of all time.  
"Oh, I'm fine, Neville. I ...I just don't know what to do. Dumbledore has seen the school and the wizarding world through so many terrible times, what hope will we have now if another enemy should arise that is more powerful than Voldemort?"  
"I don't think that will ever happen again, Professor," Harry said as he held Priscilla in his lap. "I think that with the final end of Voldemort we have seen the end of dark wizardry."  
"That's not true, Potter! His allies must be angry with you and your horrid organization. Soon they will find the strength to attack us once more as he did," McGonagall spat out in a voice that didn't quite seem her own.  
"Are you sure you're alright, Professor?" Seamus asked as he silently placed his hand over the wand in his back pocket, hidden from the Professor's sight.  
"I don't know what's come over me this evening, Seamus. This has all been such a huge shock to me that I still can't believe what's happened. I think I need to freshen up a bit, collect my thoughts." With that said, McGonagall slowly walked to the nearest lavatory in the house.  
While they all waited once more for McGonagall, Neville picked up her cloak and handbag which had fallen on the ground when she had fainted. They hadn't been retrieved since she had awoken because they were all so anxious and wonderstruck at what she had said. Hermione seemed to be taking it the hardest due to the fact that Dumbledore had been like a second father to her after her parents had been killed by Voldemort's followers. He was to have been the godfather of her and Ron's child, but now it seemed that this was no longer an option.  
Being the clumsy person that he is, Neville dropped the bag again as he tried to set it on the kitchen table. As it fell to the floor, a large green bottle fell out of the bag and smashed on the floor. Neville and Ron bent over to pick up the shards, but before they could, Hermione had used her perfected levitation charm to lay the shards on the table. Neville noticed that the label on the bottle had fallen into three pieces, so he fit them together on the table top. The pieces together, the label read POLYJUICE.  
"Blimey! What is McGonagall doing with polyjuice potion, do you think?" Neville wondered aloud. "You'd think if she needed a disguise that she would just become a cat or something."  
"What are you doing with that!?" McGonagall had entered the room, stopping dead in her tracks at the sight of her cloak, handbag, and the broken bottle. "That bag is mine. You shouldn't be searching in it. It was supposed to be a surprise, it should have been easier!"  
"Professor, what are you talking about?" Ron asked, obviously nervous. Looking at McGonagall's feeble body, he began to notice some changes. Instead of being the incredibly thin teacher he always knew, it seemed that she had gained weight. Ron also noticed that her hair was going from the normal grey to a dark brown that looked very familiar to him. Where had he seen those eyes, that nose? Before he could place the familiarity, McGonagall drew her wand and shouted EXPELLIARMUS with all her might. All of their wands flew to her and she grabbed them all; all except Neville's which he had stepped on so it would not be swept to McGonagall.  
"Professor, what are you doing?" squealed Hermione as she looked at McGonagall, horrified.  
"The attacks should have been quiet, were supposed to be quiet. That's how he planned them," McGonagall continued, ignoring Hermione. She was speaking directly to Neville, who was thinking of nothing but the wand under his foot and how he could get to it before it was too late. "I was sent to your home, to destroy you as one of the first. He sent me especially to your house because of what you did to his father. He has not forgotten, nor will he ever! You should've been dead already, but instead of going into your house, you got that letter and came here. Seeing this I came over here, still trying to keep things quiet, but then you let your predictable clumsiness foul things up again. You stumbled upon my potion. But no matter, it will still be done, and everything will proceed to his plans."  
"What are you -" Neville stuttered.  
Before he could finish his sentence, McGonagall had knocked him to his feet. Now Neville could see the same things that Ron had noticed, and yet he could not place where he had seen such features before. They certainly weren't all McGonagall's familiar features, but whose?  
"How did you know to send that letter, huh? Thought you were pretty smart, didn't you, Neville? Well, you'll regret having come here, because now your pain will be even worse than originally desired."  
As Ron watched hopelessly, he saw that Neville had kicked his wand over to Seamus. Signaling him quietly, Ron drew Seamus' attention to the wand. He tried to grab it quickly as McGonagall was hounding Neville, ready to strike.  
"Bloody hell, that's Crabbe!" Ron screamed so that he could get his attention as Seamus finally got hold of the wand. Sure enough, it was Crabbe, and the polyjuice had finally worn off. If it was even possible, the ogre of a man was even bigger than he was in his school days.  
"That's right! Now you will see the consequence of harming the family of the new dark lord, Claydrafomo!" Crabbe screamed at Neville with his wand raised. "Avada Ked -"  
"Expelliarmus!" Seamus screamed as he held out Neville's wand. "Slumbernicae!"  
With that, Crabbe fell to the ground in a deep coma. Harry, Hermione, Ron and Seamus all helped up Neville and retrieved their wands. Crabbe was placed in the magical closet that Sirius' mother had put in the house. He would never get out of there unless one of the members of The Order willed it.  
"Well, we'd better head to Hogwarts to check things out, warn the real McGonagall, see if Dumbledore really is dead," Harry said.  
"How did I send myself a letter to save myself? I didn't know he was in my home, Harry," Neville stated in a daze. "What was Crabbe talking about when he said he was sent especially because of what I did to 'his father'? Who is this Claydrafomo?"  
"I have a feeling that we'll find out soon enough," Ron said distantly. It seemed that he had realized something that he wasn't telling the rest of the bunch.  
"Its times like these when I wish Ginny were still here," Harry let out.  
"Me too," Ron said.  
"Yeah," Hermione agreed. "She would have known what to do." 


End file.
